The Dock is perhaps the most unique and used feature of macOS. It allows you to keep all your favorite apps at your fingertips. It also houses the minimized windows of all your apps along with the Trash. To get the most out of your Mac, learning to customize and set up the docking station according to your preferences is essential. We covered setting and customizing Dock preferences in detail in a previous article. Today, we’re going to focus on organizing the apps in your Dock.
As we all know, having a large number of apps in the Dock can clutter it up pretty quickly. There’s no native way to group and organize your apps in the Dock, so it quickly turns from an outstanding tool to a complete mess. However, this doesn’t have to be. In this article, we will share a hack that will help you. Arrange apps by adding space in the Dock on your Mac:
Adding Space in the Dock
1. Start terminal Application by searching in Spotlight. Now, paste the following command into the terminal window and hit return/enter.
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}'
2. Run the following command to refresh the Dock to make the changes appear. This will add a single space to your dock.
Killall Dock
This is what a void looks like inside the dock.
3. To add multiple spaces paste the first command multiple times and press return/enter. The number of spaces will be equal to how many times you paste the command. To run Killall Dock to refresh the dock.
See the image below to understand how to organize your apps using spaces. Here I have grouped the apps by their functions and separated them using spaces.
Removing Spaces from the Dock
Removing spaces is easier than adding them. Just click and drag the space out of the Dock just like you do to uninstall an app.
Bonus: Creating Applications Folder in Dock
What if you want to create an apps folder in addition to adding space to organize your apps in the Dock? Creating a folder should keep things organized as it will mess up your Mac and allow you to keep more apps in the Dock. macOS does not allow you to create an app folder directly. However, there is a hack you can use to create one. I download and install many apps while reviewing. I like to keep them in the Dock so I can easily access them. To keep them in my Doc without messing around, I create the folders like this:
one. Create a new folder everywhere on your Mac. For this article, I created a new folder on my desktop and named it “Inspect Applications” appropriately.
2. Now, Finder open the window andApps” tab.
3. right click (control+click) click the app you want to keep inside the folder and click “Make Nickname”.
4. Drag and drop the alias into the folder and repeat the process for all required apps. Now drag the folder to the right side of the Dock right next to the Trash. You will see that a folder containing all your apps has been created in the Dock. Click on the folder icon to reveal the apps.
SEE ALSO: 30 Mac Terminal Commands to Access Hidden Features
Organize Apps in the Dock on Your Mac
The two tips above will help you organize your apps in your Mac’s Dock. The first hack will help you group apps together for easy access, and the second will let you add more apps to the Dock without making a mess. Keeping your Dock organized will increase your productivity as you have instant access to everything you need. If you like these hacks and want to know more hacks like this one, let us know in the comment section below.
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